The Leningrad Region branch of Russia’s Emergencies Ministry reported on Sunday that 68 Ukrainian refugees, including 24 children, had arrived in the region

ST. PETERSBURG, July 07. /ITAR-TASS/. The government of Russia’s northwestern Leningrad Region outside St. Petersburg is ready to help a thousand of Ukrainian refugees with jobs and housing, head of the regional labor and employment committee Alexander Karavansky said on Monday.

The arrival of a group of 68 refugees from Ukraine’s embattled southeast came as a surprise on Monday, he said.

“Now the problems have been resolved, all refugees have been accommodated and there are plenty of places [for accommodation],” the official said.

“If the group stays here, there is a possibility to find employment for them — there are 947 vacancies with the provision of housing. If they need re-qualification, we are ready to retrain them,” he said.

The Agapatovo rural settlement, which has accommodated a part of refugees, initially planned to receive 30 people, the settlement’s head said.

“We were preparing to receive 30 refugees but it turned out that 45 people were coming,” Vladimir Sidorenko said.

“We bought a part of beds and another part was brought by local residents,” he said, adding the local administration was expecting the arrival of another group of refugees en route from Russia’s southern Rostov Region.

The Leningrad Region branch of Russia’s Emergencies Ministry reported on Sunday that 68 Ukrainian refugees, including 24 children, had arrived in the region. They were accommodated at temporary refugee points set up in the hospital of the village of Rozhdestveno in the Gatchina district and the cultural and leisure center of the Agapatovo settlement of the Vsevolozhsk district.

Earlier, about 80 refugees had arrived in the region from Ukraine, according to data of the Federal Migration Service.

Kiev’s operation against federalization supporters in Ukraine's embattled Donetsk and Luhansk regions bordering Russia, which involves armored vehicles, heavy artillery and attack aviation, has already resulted in hundreds of deaths, destroyed buildings and forced tens of thousands of people to cross the border from Ukraine to Russia.